'Acute, Raccoon-Like Curiosity'

For at least a year, the Fondren Library at Rice University has hosted a pair of raccoons in the ceiling between the first and second floors. I learned of their occupancy only after they were sighted on Tuesday in the German literature stacks (thus, die Waschbären), photographed, eventually captured and released at an undisclosed location. I’m told their capture by animal-control officers was a day-long, Keystone Kops-style comedy, with librarians rooting for the masked mammals.

 

My source in the circulation department says the library staff had grown accustomed to the sound of raccoon claws in dropped ceiling, especially at lunch time. Their noses would become briefly visible through the ceiling vents. No one knows how they entered the library, and presumably they were able to come and go at their convenience, most likely exiting to feed outdoors at night. My source expects their imminent return.   

 

Researchers at Vanderbilt University report raccoon brains contain some 438 million neurons  (one measure of potential intelligence) -- far more than dogs and cats, and nearly as many as some primates. In her poem “Picking and Choosing,” Marianne Moore writes of Edmund Burke: “And / Burke is a / psychologist—of acute, raccoon- / like curiosity.” Dr. Johnson said of him: “Burke is an extraordinary man. His stream of mind is perpetual.”